Becoming the Chipotle of Sweaters

An update on the future of Oliver Charles

Since starting Oliver Charles a little over a year ago, we have relied heavily on our Customer Advisory Board’s input to design the perfect sweater. We collected more than 100k data points, spoke to hundreds of customers on the phone, and built a community of over 1,700 people from all over the world.

What did we learn from collecting all this data? Everyone is different.
When we started, we were searching for a common thread we could craft a product around. We realized that’s how every clothing brand does it, and it’s not working.

So we decided to stop searching for a common thread and instead embrace the uncommon threads. Rather than forcing customers to conform to our standards, we want to conform to theirs.

We should be able to buy clothing the same way we order food at Chipotle… customized to our liking. So that’s where we are headed. To make buying a sweater more like ordering a burrito.

We aren’t setting out to become a custom clothing brand. We just want to be everyone’s favorite sweater. We dream of being your go-to piece of clothing. That one (or two 😉) piece of clothing that you’ll always want to grab no matter where you are or what you’re doing. There is no way to do that without considering each individual’s specific needs.

This isn’t a new concept; custom suits have been around forever, startups like Son of Tailor…